From the Memory Bank: My History with Video Games

Super Mario Bros. 2 - Subconscious Memories
Some dreams are real: Why the game's refashioned nature doesn't disqualify it from being a true sequel.

By the time 1989 was nearing its end, I'd developed into a full-fledged Mario Maniac. I'd spent months getting to know Super Mario Bros. and its wondrous world of magic and mystery, and consequently I'd grown so enamored with its every aspect that I came to see it as the quintessential video game. In that time, it had done so much for me: It had so perfectly acclimated me to the NES scene, to which I now felt I truly belonged. It had played a huge role in helping me to see the value of being a console-owner. It had provided me hours of entertainment. It had inspired me to imagine. And it had planted in my mind visions of an amazing future for games.

For those reasons, Super Mario Bros. had become one of the most important things in my life. It had helped to make 1989 a very special time for me.

1989 was also a particularly busy period: Concurrently I was being overwhelmed by a deluge of new games, all of which were coming into my possession as a result of my brother's frequent buying sprees. Every so often, he would head out to the local shops and snatch up loads of older NES games, pulling them from bargain bins or otherwise buying them up in bulk at discount prices. This was odd behavior because he never actually played any of these games, and he generally avoided the console (he didn't become an enthusiast for the NES until years later, when it became RPG-heavy).

That was James, man. That was one of his peculiarities: He was always buying games or toys for which he had little use and doing so seemingly for the sake of it.

Oh, I'm certainly glad that he did. I've come to fondly remember this period in my life--my earliest days as a console-owner, when my library was growing rapidly thanks to the introduction of so many strange, unfamiliar games, some of which went on to become cherished favorites. 

But back then, sadly, I didn't truly appreciate his efforts, since I was still someone who was hesitant to try new things. I was all too quick to decide that I wasn't going to play a majority of those games.

There was also another big reason why I didn't care to spare them any attention: I already had my eye on some other title. The way I saw it, there was only one "new game" that was worthy of being added to my collection. It was the game that had stolen all of my focus: Super Mario Bros. 2, which had managed to fly below my radar but was suddenly soaring into view as a result of its riding the drift of a certain burgeoning movement.

You know the one: It was Mario Mania.

As had every other 12-year-old at the time, I'd been wholly consumed by it. Super Mario Bros. 3 was right around the corner, and Nintendo's hype machine had so effectively spread the message across every form of media--had so masterfully incorporated the game into every area our lives--that we were drooling in anticipation of its release.

I was completely obsessed with Super Mario Bros. 3. I had never coveted a game more.

But there was one problem: I wasn't fully up to speed with the series' canon! I mean, I'd never even finished Super Mario Bros. 2, doing which was essential to being a true Mario player! Hell--I didn't even own a copy of the game. "How can I claim to be a loyal member of the Mario Fanclub when I have these transgressions on my record?" I had to ask myself.

So I decided that I'd remedy the situation by making sure to include Super Mario Bros. 2 on my Christmas list for that year.

And my request was granted: Come December 25th, Super Mario Bros. 2 was mine. It became the centerpiece in another NES-rich holiday season.

But before I tell you about that, I have to rewind the clock a bit and provide some setup. I have to take you back to a few months prior, when Super Mario Bros. 2 first came into my life.

Now, I'd been playing NES games long before I became an NES-owner--basically since 1986--so I was quite aware of all the trends surrounding the console. Certainly I was around to witness the build to Super Mario Bros. 2's release; really, it was hard to miss it when three of my closest friends were so hotly anticipating the game's arrival. And I knew a lot about Mario; I'd already become intimately familiar with the character and his exploits, having spent a significant amount of time playing the arcade version of Mario Bros., the Atari 2600 version of Donkey Kong, and Wrecking Crew; also, I had some level of experience with Super Mario Bros. So I understood why Mario was so important and why a sequel to Super Mario Bros., his industry-shaping classic, was such a huge deal.

Ergo, I understood why my friend Dominick was so ecstatic when his parents bought the game for him late in 1988. He couldn't wait to pop it into the NES. "That must be the kind of excitement only a console-owner could feel," I thought to myself while I watched him tear off the plastic and unbox the game. "It must be great to be able to play these monumental games almost immediately upon release and thereafter whenever you feel like it."

Fortunately, Dominick was nice enough to let me play it with him, both on that day and pretty much every day in following. It feels strange to say that in only a week, the total amount of hours I spent playing Super Mario Bros. 2 eclipsed the number of those I'd dedicated to the original Super Mario Bros. over the course of two years. It was a fantastic game. I loved everything about it.

That's why I was so eager to get my hands on a copy. It's why I was the happiest kid in Brooklyn when it arrived in our home that Christmas.

I don't have specific memories of Super Mario Bros. 2 but instead a number of enduring thoughts, almost all of which began developing during my first experience with the game. I can tell you that from moment one I was taken with its unique dream-world aesthetic, which I found to be delightfully bizarre and fascinating in a who-could-have-conceived-of-this sort of way. The egg-shaped clouds, the expression-bearing vegetables, the weirdly costumed enemies, the curiously inverted Subspace, those rectangular formations with their wavy alternating-greens textures--I'd never seen anything like this. Truly this was the most distinct-looking of Mario's games and furthermore one of the most distinct-looking games in the entire medium. Thirty years later, these visuals are still unmistakable.

I was also pleased to see that Mario now bore closer resemblance to the character as portrayed in the games' official art. No longer was he depicted as an unshapely, oddly postured pixel creature wearing clashing brown- and ginger-colored garments. Now his spritework was doing the character justice; now he was donning the proper attire: his famous blue-overalls-and-red-shirt ensemble. (Though, for some reason, his depiction on the game's box art had it reversed to where he was wearing red overalls and a blue shirt. We were never told why and could only speculate as to the significance of the contrasting color-scheme.)

His looking more lifelike went a long way toward making it seem as though Super Mario Bros. 2 was a next-level game--something far beyond those we'd played previously. That was exactly how I perceived it. That, I thought, was exactly how a sequel should make you feel.

We were kind of disappointed that you couldn't stomp on enemies, bounce off of them, or send them rocketing across the surface, sure, but we got over it pretty quickly when we realized how much fun it was to pluck vegetables and pick up enemies--of every shape and size--and then toss them all around. It was just as satisfying to throw one enemy into another and cause a chain reaction wherein a slain Shy Guy would collide with the one closely trailing him, who would then collide with the next Shy Guy in line, and so on. It was such a fun mechanic. We liked it so much that we spent decades in following lamenting the fact that they never again designed another main-series game around it.

Also, being given the choice to play as one of four different hero characters was the best thing ever! That was three more than you'd find in most every other game (at best you'd get two, and they were usually identical). Plus they were all variably powered, and you could switch between them after completing a stage, which in our estimation created for near-endless replayability! Of course, we all had our favorite characters as well as those we were apt to avoid, sometimes entirely. It all came down to personal preference: Did you want to zip your way along, trading power for pure speed? Move about deliberately and carefully plan your actions? Or have the ability to bypass troublesome sections by floating over them? If you were the strategic type, you could even choose strategies on a stage-by-stage basis--swap in the character who was best suited for dealing with the upcoming stage's hazards.

There were so many ways to play! Super Mario Bros. 2 held the potential to be a different experience each time. Being able to choose between multiple heroes was the game's defining feature and one that we hoped to see further explored in future series entries. Well, what happened instead was that we spent the next two decades wondering why Nintendo was refusing to provide another multi-hero Super Mario Bros. game. 

It's almost like there's a pattern here.

Otherwise, I liked that the game had a more-relaxed vibe to it. Truth be told, I was never a big fan of timed stages or challenges that forced you to rush along, since I preferred to move about at my own pace and take the time to carefully observe my surroundings. That's why I so greatly enjoyed playing Super Mario Bros. 2--a game that invited me to explore stages at my leisure. I could search for mushroom locations and secret rooms and do so without feeling stressed. I could spend as much time I wanted experimenting with the game's mechanics and absorbing all of its largely-new content. And I could be meticulous and thus more strategic in how I tackled the game's challenges, be they bomb-placement puzzles, digging sequences, or those tense Phanto chases.

And never once did any of my friends or I think to dock Super Mario Bros. 2 points because it abandoned many of its predecessor's well-loved concepts. That didn't bother us one bit. After all: Back then, there was no such thing as a "formula sequel" (a term that when introduced would quickly come to infer "more of the same")--a followup that was strictly iterative. In this, an era when companies weren't afraid to take creative risks, the gaming populace was treated to several wonderfully divergent sequels. We're talking about such classics as Pitfall II: Lost Caverns, Zelda II: The Adventure of Link, Castlevania II: Simon's Quest, Eggerland Mystery 2, and Donkey Kong's unheralded pair of sequels.

So Super Mario Bros. 2 being different from its predecessor wasn't a great shock to us. Really, we had no expectation that a Super Mario Bros. sequel would follow the blueprint. We were ready to accept it for what it was.

Super Mario Bros. 2 chose to unshackle itself from convention, and we were happy that it did.

Hell--I didn't even mind that the ending's big revelation--that it was all just a dream--suggested that the game's events and moreover all of my struggles were completely inconsequential. That it ran with such a cliched storytelling device didn't at all adversely affect my opinion of the game. As far as I was concerned, there was nothing inconsequential about my journeys through Subcon's delightfully whimsical world; I considered everything I did there--every action I took while joyously exploring the game's world--to be intrinsic to an expanding Super Mario series canon. This Mario adventure was real, and I didn't care if Nintendo thought otherwise. (So you can understand why I was thrilled when Nintendo began to canonize the game's enemy cast starting in Super Mario Bros. 3, which brought back Bob-ombs; its doing so strengthened my stance.)

Also, the ending sequence was pretty great. The wonderfully rendered animation of Mario sleeping and that emotive, wistfully imbued credits theme combined to create an instantly classic ending. I'd often repeat that it was worth playing through Super Mario Bros. 2 just so you could watch it play and lose yourself to the music. It truly was one of the most unforgettable endings in video-game history.

The point was that Super Mario Bros. 2 did well to differentiate itself while still making us feel as though its gameplay was a natural continuation of its predecessor's. There wasn't any brick-breaking or Goomba-stopping, no, but there were plenty of other meaningful nods: The physics were much the same; Mario and friends could dash when prompted and execute fully modulated jumps. You could descend down tall, slim vases (this game's version of pipes) and collect goodies in the underground areas below. You could climb series of vines. Every so often you'd pluck a red turtle shell, using which you could mow down packs of enemies. And whenever you'd travel into Subspace, you'd hear an abbreviated-though-nonetheless-welcoming rendition of the iconic Super Mario Bros. overworld theme.

Super Mario Bros. 2 was always keen to remind us of where we came from.

Yet we were more in love with the game's unique attributes. We were enamored with its wonderfully distinct Arabian-themed setting as comprised of all of those unmistakable visuals I mentioned earlier. We were entranced by its charmingly jaunty stage theme and its mysterious, sometimes-haunting cave music. We enjoyed tackling its uniquely crafted platforming challenges (needing to carry keys while avoiding Phantos, platform across whales and their water spouts, ride on magic carpets, cross over long chasms by jumping from one Albatoss to the next or by riding on Birdo eggs, dig through corridors while under constant threat, ride Autobombs across spike pits, etc.). And we were fond its creatively designed, personality-filled enemies; we found that so much of the game's fun factor was derived from enemy interaction; you were invited to mess with them in many different ways!

Oh, and we liked that new super-jump move. We had fun using it to break the level design--to find new and interesting ways to bypass whole areas. We were kinda disappointed that it didn't return in Super Mario Bros. 3.

In those early days, I didn't feel confident enough in my skills to take on the entirety of Super Mario Bros. 2 with Mario or Toad, either of whom was limited in his jumping ability and so quick that he could easily find himself out of control, so I stuck mainly to the slow-but-super-nimble Luigi and occasionally called upon the services of Princess Toadstool, whose floating ability was useful for safely hovering over troublesome enemies (Cobrats, Pansers and Porcupos) and long gaps that even Luigi couldn't clear. In the average play-through, though, it was nothin' but Luigi. He was my boy. In a short amount of time, I became proficient in beating the game with him.

Still, it didn't feel right to me that I was playing a Mario-titled game and not using Mario. I mean, this was the medium's biggest star, and his name being on the box was the reason we were buying this game, yet here I was basically ignoring his presence. You'd have thought he'd be positioned as the "safe" choice, the well-balanced, easily controlled "default" character who could competently handle the game's platforming challenges and reliably make difficult jumps. Instead, his role seemed to be that of the game's scrub character. He was undependable in every aspect: He was too uncontrollably fast to reliably handle precision platforming, he wasn't particularly nimble, and he carried so much weight that he'd likely plummet to his death when attempting to clear long gaps--those that Super Mario Bros.'s Mario could clear effortlessly. He was basically a less-capable Toad.

It seemed to me that none of the stage layouts were designed with his abilities in mind. And because of that, it was no fun to play as him. "Why would they treat the main character this way?!" I wondered.

So, though it felt wrong to do so, I had to bench Mario in this one (for the first few years, at least).

That's the way I'd play it: I'd choose Luigi and then adventure my way through all twenty of Subcon's stages. I continued to do so even after figuring out which vases functioned as warp points. It's what felt natural. Where Super Mario Bros.'s style of level design encouraged you to speed along and utilize shortcuts, Super Mario Bros. 2's put its arm around you and said, "Take your time, pal. See the world. Enjoy the sights and sounds. Experience everything this game has to offer!"

And that's what I'd do. I'd traverse each stage in a leisurely fashion and observe its activity. I'd enter every cave, procure every mushroom (the ones whose locations I'd discovered, at least), and spend a few minutes engaging in my usual tomfoolery. I felt that doing anything less was akin to cheating myself out of a genuine Super Mario Bros. 2 experience. It was integral, I thought, to visit the game's every space. To drop potions wherever I could and discover what might be waiting for me behind those magically appearing doors. 

Well, OK--there were times when I'd skip over certain stage areas using either Luigi's long-jumps or the Princess' floating ability, as I mentioned earlier, but in the majority of play-throughs I didn't. And I'd always feel guilty about it when I did. What can I say? Sometimes it was so tempting that I just couldn't resist. After all: It's difficult to possess an ability and not put it to use. You know?

Oh, I could skillfully speed through the game if I so desired. It wasn't so difficult to do once I mapped to memory all of the stage layouts and the enemy-placement. I could stay in full motion the entire time, deftly hopping and crouch-sliding way through enemy storms (like 4-2's charging hordes of Beezos and Flurries). Of course, there would always be minor mistakes, like when I'd attempt to land atop a Pokey and overshoot him wildly, at which point I'd become sandwiched in between two of the spiky varmints and die before I could finish spazzing out; or when I'd accidentally throw myself into a pit because I couldn't resist trying to obtain the heart that had just started floating out from it (and in most cases I didn't even need the heart). I was a genius like that.

So, yeah--there'd be an occasional miscalculation. I'd toss away some lives along the way. In fact, it was common that I'd make it to Wart with no lives to spare. If I didn't get lucky with the 1up-doling slot machine, then--oh, man--it'd be uncomfortably close. This wouldn't change until years later, when I became adept at reading the reels' motion and could get three cherries every time. Let me tell you: It always helped to have 30-plus lives by World 3.

It's funny: Whenever I'm away from the game for prolonged periods, I remember it as being "really easy," and then I react with the same surprise when I find out that parts of it are particularly harrowing. You know--like when you have to cross long expanses by jumping onto Trouters as they dive out from below, or when you have to deal with 5-3's long-lasting Bob-omb storm. If the slot machine is being unkind, you can be in for a rough ride, especially in a warpless run. And there are no continues! Soon enough, I'm reminded that Super Mario Bros. 2 is a fairly challenging game. 

I mean, there is a reason why my younger self became so proficient at dodging Wart's poisonous bubble spew. He had to. Failure meant having to repeat those aforementioned Trouter sequences. And he didn't need that stress.

Super Mario Bros. 2 was another splendidly made video game for a console that was producing a great many of them. In short order, Mario's latest worked its way into an elite class of NES games. Everyone in my circle loved it. We all considered it to be a favorite. It became one from a group of games to which we'd return frequently.

We enjoyed playing the game not just because it was a whole lot of fun but also because it provided us so much opportunity to play around with its mechanics and pull off our trademarked tricks and stunts. We'd build mushroom-block barriers around exit doors (whose accompanying light for some reason took up physical space) and thus trap ourselves. In 4-2, we'd collect all of the cherries while riding the Autobomb and then use the spawned star to instantly kill the boss Birdo. We'd exploit a weird glitch that allowed us to displace ladder parts with mushroom blocks and cause them to permanently vanish. We'd protect ourselves from Tryclyde's fire attacks by building a defensive wall of mushroom blocks and then score an easy victory by hiding behind the fortification and lobbing the remaining mushroom blocks over it. And we'd spend far too much time trying to force our way over, beneath and through walls in our repeated attempts to find the rumored "super-secret" shortcuts (the variety that would supposedly allow you warp to World 7 from any of the previous worlds) that we'd often hear about in the schoolyard.

All of those rumors turned out to be lies. Can you believe it, man?

And we'd make the most out of that replayability factor I talked about earlier. Sometimes, while taking turns, we'd force ourselves to use all four characters in continuous succession--from left to right, right to left, right to left and back, or any other permutation we could think up. Other times, we'd attempt Mario- or Toad-only runs. And if we were feeling brave, we'd attempt no-mushroom or no-coin runs and sometimes a combination of both. We came up with lots of ways to play it.

And it was during those many play-throughs that we created years' worth of great childhood memories. We'd never forget our time spent in Subcon or the positive impact these experiences had on our lives. We wouldn't forget how Super Mario Bros. 2, as could only our most-cherished favorites, helped to strengthen our friendships.

As time went on, and I was seeing less and less of childhood friends, Super Mario Bros. 2 started to fill a different role in my life. It never changed that I'd return to it because it was a reliably-fun platformer, no, but what came to matter more was when I was playing it and the reason for why I was choosing to play it at that particular moment in time. Really, it was all about atmosphere and remembrance. I loved to associate games with certain days, seasons or holidays; and often I'd depend upon games to evoke memories. Super Mario Bros. 2 gave me the opportunity to marry these inclinations, and I happily seized it. I discovered a time and place when it could most effectively do those jobs me. It was any quiet, warm summer afternoon when my parents were out and I had the whole house to myself. When the sun was refracting through my room's shades and creating for a muted brightness that was reminiscent of the type of luminance that provided shading to all of my friends' game rooms and helped to immerse me in the moment when we were playing and enjoying Super Mario Bros. 2.

That's when Super Mario Bros. 2's emanations were the most powerful. That's when playing it meant the most.

It's just a shame that revelations as to the game's true origin worked to damage both its reputation and its mystique. Once the cat was let out of the bag (by the Mario Mania Player's Guide and previews of Super Mario All-Stars) and it became clear that the masked-goon-filled, wavy-textured Super Mario Bros. 2 was not an original creation, people were all too quick to revise their opinions and define it down--declare it to be something lesser. Then came the Internet age, a time when every dink with a keyboard thought it necessary to find an outlet and shout derisively that Super Mario Bros. 2 was "nothing but a reskinned port of a Japanese game game called Yume Koujou: Doki Doki Panic!", as if he or she were the first to discover as much.

It was as if they forget why they loved the game in the first place. "Why does it matter that it's a remake of some other Nintendo game?" I'd wonder in my frustration. "Does knowing as much erase all of those great memories the game provided you? Does it make the game any less fun for you?"

For some people, it apparently does.

Now, I understand why Nintendo did what it did: It would have raised a lot of questions had a "Super Mario Bros. 3" been revealed when there was no "Super Mario Bros. 2" (as far as most Westerners knew), so the company had no option but to whip something up in a hurry and ship it out while the public was still unaware of the big sequel currently rocking Japan. And I'm not disappointed at all that Nintendo chose to take this course of action. We got a great game out of it--a top-tier NES platformer that we would have otherwise missed had the company heads instead said "Screw it" and decided to not even bother supplying a part 2 of the series.

I mean, some people act as though Doki Doki Panic were some farmed-out, afterthought of a game. It really isn't! It was created in-house. It was produced by the venerable Shigeru Miyamoto, and the legendary game-music composer Koji Kondo provided the music! These are the people who brought you the original Super Mario Bros. They're the ones who imbued Doki Doki Panic with so much soul. In no way is it second-rate.

In fact, it even began life as a prototype for a game that was set to be titled "Super Mario Bros. 2"! That being the case, how can we say that it isn't a "real" Mario game?

Of course, Nintendo shares some of the blame here. The company is apt to ignore the game's impact, and it provides tepid responses when people ask about the likelihood of its crafting a Mario sequel that plays like it and expands upon its ideas. For whatever reason, Shigeru and pals just ain't interested.

Though, I'll tell you this: If we ever do see a Super Mario Bros. 2-style sequel, its very existence will no doubt go a long way toward fully legitimizing the original work and restoring its good name. I hope to see it happen.

Until then, I'll just stick to finding solace in the fact that Nintendo has on occasion paid tribute to it and has long since canonized its enemy cast (Shy Guys are prolific in the Yoshi's Island series, and others like Bob-omb, Pokey, and Ninji are now recurring cast members). It deserves that and more.

Super Mario Bros. 2 teaches developers an important lesson--one that should have been apparent to them even way back when: It's good to occasionally deviate from convention--to provide people new ways to play and new types of worlds to explore. Repeating the same formula over and over again produces only feelings of staleness and homogeneity and ultimately consumer apathy. It's how you wind up with New Super Mario Bros. U.

So will we ever again see a 2D Super Mario game that takes us to a wholly original world and provides us (a) unique mechanics with which to experiment, (b) a largely exclusive enemy cast, and (c) an interesting new main villain? Does Nintendo understand that giving a chance to something new and different can potentially result in heightened consumer interest and even a renewed appetite for the tried-and-true? Will it conclude that shaking things up may very well be the key to revitalizing its stagnant 2D Mario brand? I don't know. Time will tell, I guess.

Even if it never happens, we'll still have Super Mario Bros. 2, the wonderfully unusual and very "real" sequel to Super Mario Bros. It'll still be there to remind us that being offbeat doesn't make you any less authentic.

"So what place does the game have in your life in recent years?" you ask.

Well, I'm sad to say that I drifted away from NES games in 1996, after finishing high school, and didn't come back to them until the middle-late portion of 1999, when I discovered emulation. When at that point I played Super Mario Bros. 2, I was doing so for the first time in about five-six years. After that, I'd return to it only sporadically. It wasn't until 2004, when I became disenchanted with modern games and began to look to older games to fill the void, that I came to remember why Super Mario Bros. 2 was special to me--why I valued it so. And that's when I realized that I still needed it (and so many other NES games) in my life--that it could slide right back in and reprise its role. For a while, I was playing it once every 2-3 years, but lately I find myself returning to it once every few months. For all of the reasons mentioned here, its value has been ever-increasing.

All these years later, I still have great fun whenever I'm journeying my way through Subcon, whether I'm doing it with characters I was once apt to avoid (Mario and Toad) or with the entire group. But, honestly, I'm still partial to Luigi; the boy is just too good. Really, though, no matter how I choose to tackle the game's challenges, the result is always the same: I'm provided a fun, satisfying platforming experience. That's what Super Mario Bros. 2 is all about.

I regret that I didn't give the Game Boy Advance version, Super Mario Advance, a fair chance. I quickly abandoned it after concluding that it was merely a noisy, over-designed variation of the original game. And because I wasn't a big fan of the GBA in general (I bought it only because I didn't want to miss out on the latest Castlevania and Metroid games) and rarely took it out of the box, there was no chance that interests would ever align in such a way that I'd feel the need to play Super Mario Advance.

Though, now that I've had the chance to watch other people play it, I've come to see that it's a pretty good version of the game. It's packed with personality and charm, and it's a lot more content-rich than I thought originally (it's far from a straight port). I'm thinkin' that it's about time for me to give it a second look. After all: Any excuse to return to Subcon is a good one.

"So how do we do it?" you ask. "How do we reconcile the fact that there are two games carrying the name 'Super Mario Bros. 2.'? How can we claim that both are 'real' sequels?"

Well, I think that it's rather easy to find justification for such a claim. I look at it like this: The original Super Mario Bros. was so amazingly groundbreaking, so monumentally impactful, and such an incredible masterpiece that a mere one sequel, alone, could never hope to adequately expand upon its ideas. So Super Mario Bros. demanded something of which no other game was worthy: two direct sequels--a necessarily disparate pair of games both titled "Super Mario Bros. 2."

That's why we needed the Western version of Super Mario Bros. 2.

And because we have it, the video-game world is a better place.